


Spring's End

by clericalchar (selstarry)



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst and Feels, Bittersweet, Dark, F/M, Mild Blood, Ruler/minister, character endings mashup, era of peace vs. era of war is always fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 23:14:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20182312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selstarry/pseuds/clericalchar
Summary: "When a spring dries up, the fish gather on the ground, wetting each other's gills with the foam from their mouths. But it is better to forget each other amid rivers and lakes."--Zhuangzi, my half-assed translation





	Spring's End

**Author's Note:**

> Still haven't played the game. Still very tired. Wrote this in a fit of ruler/minister horniness on my phone. I love ransacking the tropes of my ancestors.

In one of the worlds that ends in waste, they find each other in the shadow of the siege. Outside, preparations continue through the night, and they navigate in the darkened room by the dim haze of distant torchlight. Their paths have narrowed into one.

The supplies run low and an army is at the gate and they have no healers left worth the name. When Edelgard presses Hubert down on the bed, she leaves bloody, reopened fingerprints like petals torn from a red flower. They feed each other the breath from their lungs, the heat from their skin. In the morning, they rise, and fasten each other's armor, and do not live to see each other again.

In a better world, they set aside time every morning to sit under the streaming sunlight. They lean back in their chairs and talk of harvests, committees, old friends and new, outings with Byleth, tea and debate with Ferdinand. They take out quills and ink and pass paperwork across the table, gloved fingertips lingering fondly on the parchment where other gloved fingertips had rested.

Both of them are people who have made themselves for strife; other tutors must teach them peace. It takes much to make them people capable of such a thing as retirement, a small wonder in the world of wonders, the one where they live to see silver in each other's hair.


End file.
